The Men of the Archangel Author(s): Eugen Weber Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 1, No.

1 (1966), pp. 101-126 Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/259651 . Accessed: 10/05/2012 06:14
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The

Men

of

the

Archangel

Eugen Weber
We are often told that fascist movements recruit most heavily among the middle or lower middle classes, a point which is supor reactionary nature. posed to show their essentiallyconservative This raises several questions. First: is the assertionfactuallycorrect? Do fascist or fascist-type movements actually draw their leaders and followers in significantlyhigh proportionsfrom the middlesectionsof society? Second:is the conceptof middle classes a meaningful one in this context? And last: is there something about those groups among whom fascism particularly reactionary recruitsmost heavily and, indeed, what are the particular characteristics of such groups? If questionsof this natureare more easily askedthan answered, it is becauseinformationis thin on the ground.Analyticalstudies of partymembershipand partyleadershipare very scarceindeed. No study like Daniel Lerner'sNazi Elitehas been devotedto other movements.HaroldLasswelland Renzo Serenoon 'Governmental and Party Leadersin Fascist Italy', published nearly thirty years ago,1is not very helpful; Dante L. Germino'sItalianFascistParty in Poweradds little on this score; the NSDAP has fared a little better, with Hans Gerth'sessay (in Robert K. Merton,ed., Reader in Bureaucracy), Rudolf Heberle's studies of Schleswig-Holstein, written in the thirties and gatheredin a slim but useful volume, But that is about all. And in the absence of evidence, especially such evidence as would allow us to comparethe recruitment and motivationsof fascistmovementsin differentcountriesand conditions, we are thrownbackon guesswork,which can be very useful, but also misleading - according to one's prejudices. We may assume, for instance, that shop-assistants,being 'lower middle
1 American Political Science Review, October I937. IOI

From Democracy to Nazism, and Theodore Abel's very suggestive inquiry among Nazi Party members, Why Hitler Came Into Power.

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

class', will go fascist ratherthan socialistor communist;although Hans Fallada'slittle man goes the otherway and, in Belgium, the white collar unions are social-democratic. We may assume that peasantswill be conservative,perhapsreactionary, irrespectiveof particularconditions, and cite fascist successes in the Po valley, while forgettingthat they werewon againstthe obstinateresistance of peasant communes whose red flags held out for a long time againstthe black;or, in France,we may cite Henri Dorgereswhile forgettingRenaudJean. Only more precisestudies will tell us who has inclined to what, in what proportionsand in what circumstances. And, while in no to more to contribute the debate, I should like, position precision I shall at any rate,to establishthat the matteris still controversial. do this number about to a of facts one of certain try by introducing the lesser knownfascistmovementsof the thirties,and then using discussion that and otherdatain an attemptto begin a comparative and imof fascist sociologyand fascist appeal.The foolhardiness of if it will succeeds this course have been warranted perfections in sparking furtherstudiesthat can correctits errorsand introduce some order into a realm where today only inferenceand opinion The third strongestpartyto come out of the Romaniangeneral elections of December I937, was a movementbest known in the West as the Iron Guard.The electorallabel under which it campaigned, All for the Fatherland(TPT), was the last of a series devised to cope with the vagariesof governmentaldisfavour,but which never concealed the continued existence of one enduring
body founded in I927 - the Legion of the Archangel Michael reign.

Its first contactwith uniand of its founder,CorneliuCodreanu.2 versalsuffrage,in the generalelections of July I931, had brought what was then called the CodreanuGroup less than 2 per cent of seats. In the ten months that followed, Codrenistcandidateshad been successful against Liberal opponentsin by-electionsfought in two Moldaviancounties.They retainedthese seats and addedto them when new generalelectionsheld in July 1932 broughtthem 70,674 votes and five seats in the Chamber.Dissolved by govern2 For the story of Codreanu's movement and its antecedents see my Varieties of Fascism (Princeton: 1964), passim; and, in greater detail, 'Romania' in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, The European Right (Berkeley: I965).

the total votes cast (34,I83) and, under the Romanian system, no

102

THE MEN OF THE ARCHANGEL

ment fiat on the eve of new electionsin December I933, the elections of 1937were the firstopportunitythey had of re-enteringthe competitionat the polls. They won 478,378 votes, I5-58 per cent of the ballot- 4-82 per cent less than the largestparty,the National PeasantParty, and 6-43 per cent more than their runners-upand immediatecompetitorsof the National ChristianParty, and they elected 66 deputiesin a Chamberthat numbered390. In the electoral campaign that followed almost immediately, when the newly-appointedNational Christian government dissolved a parliament which had had no time to meet in orderto seek an improbableworking majority,the TPT was expected to improve its alreadystrong position. But elections were never held. February1938 broughta royal coup d'etat that did awaywith the party regime, instituted a new Constitution,and suppressedfurwouldnot see his after,murderedat the end of the year,3Codreanu movementcome to powerwhen King Carolwas forcedto abdicate in SeptemberI940, nor watchits popularitycollapsein the months that followed.AfterJanuaryI94I, when its bid to retainpowercollapsed, the Legion became a rump of voluble exiles squabbling been a majorfactorin Romanianpolitics, a force whose popularity is reflected in the attention with which the present Romanian regimestill treatsit today. As the only 'fascist'movementoutside Italy and Germanyto come to powerwithoutforeignaid, the Legion wouldrepayinvestigation by scholarscuriousto explainits successin a societyvery different from those of the west and centralEuropeanlands where fascism first appearedand prospered:a peasantcountry,underdeveloped, whereno working-class the underindustrialized, partiesthreatened vested interestsof the bourgeoisie,where the bourgeoisieitself in its classic commercialand industrial form was weak or absent,
3 Codreanu's arrest in April I938 did not come as Ghita Ionescu avers in Communism in Rumania, p. 55 'after a new outbreak of terrorism', but after Codreanu's calling for and maintaining his followers' complete submission to the government. Codreanu's murder on 30 November 1938, did come after such an outbreak which the imprisoned leader had struggled to prevent, and which served to justify his elimination. He and the thirteen legionnaires who died with him were not shot, as Ionescu says, but first garrotted and only then 'shot while trying to escape'.

ther political - let alone electoral - competition. Arrested shortly

over the causes of their failure. But between 1930 and I94I it had

103

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

wherenationalism was not an issue of partypoliticsbut partof the generalconsensus,and wherethereforea radicalnationalistpolitical movement could not succeed either by recruitingnationalists against anti-nationalistsor by mobilizing social reactionaries against organized workers, because there were neither antinationalistsnor organizedworkersto justify such appeals. A widespreadview holds fascismto be the ideology of a declining bourgeoissociety. Yet in Romaniano bourgeoisiecomparable to those of western or central Europe ever developed, and the Legion never pretendedto defendwhat bourgeoisietherewas, but attackedit and condemnedthe corruptways which it connected with bourgeoisvalues and institutions. In this it resembledother fascistmovementswhich neverappearas the last weaponof liberal finance capitalism, but rather as its doom. All over Europe, throughoutthe twenties and the thirties, from Finland down to and, what is Spain, the fascists saw themselvesas revolutionaries of Some liked to them it. critics accused conservative more, their think of the fascist revolutionas perfectingthe principlesof 1789, a point of view that Marcel Deat developedat some length in his
Revolutionfranfaise et revolution allemande (Paris: 1943) and that we find again in Ruggero Zangrandi's II Lungo Viaggio attraverso il Fascismo (Milan: 1962).

The organicview of the nation led easily towardscollectivism and to emphasison the most neglectedand productivesections of the national community. This was the socialism of nationalsocialism, the inspirationof its anti-bourgeoisand anti-capitalist orientation. Looking back on the twenties and thirties, on the socialof contemporary and governmentalization embourgeoisement not attacked them fascists to understand is easier it only why ists, for dividing the nation but also for forgettingtheir revolutionary Yet they found So, fascistswere or wantedto be revolutionaries. themselvesopposedto rivalrevolutionary partieswith which they on an absolutelyvital issue: that of classwarfareor, from disagreed their point of view, of nationalunity. This fundamentaldisagreement, and the rivalries,competition,and manoeuvringthat followed, castthe fascistsas the unlikelyalliesof the forcesof orderor reaction;it made sure that their violencewould serve againsttheir and, at leastto startwith, preservemuch competitors revolutionary of the system (if not the order)which they rejected.
I04 spirit.

THE MEN OF THE ARCHANGEL

Inevitably, in the circumstances, those fascists who stood for revolution were overtaken and overborne by those who stood more for national unity, with the anti-Marxism and the opportunistic alliances this implied. In the hierarchy of priorities, power and antiMarxism came to stand before revolution. Even though these were temporary developments, they necessarily altered the physiognomy of the movements they affected until, in the West, fascism came to appear (though only temporarily) as the preserver of the society against which it had rebelled. In other societies, however, where significant movements of the revolutionary left did not exist, where the working classes were not organized, where the socialists were inaudible and communists invisible - except across the border, as an alien, hostile power the fascists faced no radical competition. Their radicalism was able to develop without need to guard itself on its left, or compromise too much with the forces of moderation. In countries like Romania, and even Hungary, fascist movements appear in quite a different guise from that with which we are familiar in the West: not because their slogans or their activities were very different, but because their role was different. They were free to act as the radical and revolutionary movement they never clearly became in the West. This is what happened in Romania, in the case of Codreanu and his Legion of the Archangel Michael, and it becomes apparent when one looks at the particular public to which they appealed. Codreanu's followers have been described by their own countrymen as 'made up largely of pseudo-intellectual riff-raff unable or unwilling to make a decent living, and who sought refuge in a mystic nationalism, the only reality of which was a ferocious antiSemitism'; as mostly 'white-collar workers, unsuccessful students, and various dilettanti transformed into political zealots'; or again as a conjunction of declasses and lumpenproletariat.4 Yet, in the nearest thing to a free election since 1928, this unprepossessing gang managed to garner nearly I6 per cent of the popular vote and to enlist the hopes of several hundred thousand people for their 'mystic nationalism' which aimed, although Cretianu does not say so, not only to destroy existing authorities but also to renovate them
4 Alexandru Cretianu, The Lost Opportunity (London: 1957), p. 20; Ionescu, op. cit., p. 37; Lucretiu Patrascanu, Problemele de baza ale Romaniei (Bucarest: 1946), pp. 259-62; compare the more nuanced and perceptive discussion in Henry Roberts, Rumania (New Haven: 1951), pp. 231-2.

IO5

CONTEMPORARY

HISTORY

and to createa 'new man' endowedwith all the virtuesRomanians lacked:honest, responsible,industrious,reliable,above all correct. It was this vague but not altogetherunfocusedreactionto the and the hope of a betterworld prevailingslacknessand corruption, that went with it, that helped the Legion win not only the leadership of the country'sstudentmovement,but a dominantinfluence which most observersnote.5 The rathervague elan of romantic nationalismdid not exclude a very utilitarianand didacticmoralism, which shouldremindus that in countrieslike Romaniaobjectives we may considerbourgeoiscan play an essentiallyrevolutionaryrole, andthat it was only by using terrorto suppresscorruption and to impose simple bourgeoisvirtues like honesty, punctuality, responsibility, and hard work that the communists actually rationalizedand revolutionizedthe economy of countries from Romaniato China, and introducedtheir own version of unejuste Where That this beganin studentcirclesis highly symptomatic. not do do not exist institutions really or, existing, representative function, schools and universities provide almost the only and certainlythe most convenient platform for public discussion of nationaland international issues, and students are bound to form the vanguardof all radicalmovements. The more backwardthe country,the greaterthe part that studentsplay in its politicallife, if only because,in the absenceof otheragenciesof humanconcentrationsuch as factories,schools will take their place, gatheringa the formapublic, facilitating similarlyuprootedand concentrated of action,creatinga studentselftion of groupsandthe preparation of otherpoliticonsciousnessand solidaritybefore the appearance classsolidarities. callysignificant studentmovementhad Until the middletwenties,the Romanian fromthe Uniturnedon breadand butterissues. It was Codreanu, the from henchman Mota, University of versity of Iasi, and his to political material to subordinate students the Cluj, who taught force. a into them and turned Thus, demands politicallysignificant the part played by students in Romanianpolitics in general and in politicizthe role of legionnaires legionarypoliticsin particular, in their the students and then movement student the mobilizing ing
5 E.g., Roberts, op cit.; Henri Prost, Destin de la Roumanie (Paris: 1954) and Les Mouvements nationalistes en Roumanie (Bucarest: I948), MS in the author's possession.

inegalite and la carriere ouverte aux talents.

Io6

THE MEN OF THE ARCHANGEL

campaignto make over and take over the country, indicate their 'superior' dynamism and their understandingof a new kind of to the society to which they addressedthempolitics appropriate selves. The possibility remains that a political movement startingfrom such a base would reflect interests as particularas those of the othergroupsthat preyedupon the country.And it maywell be that they reflectedthe mind and needs of the stratumfrom which most studentmilitantshadstemmed.But the firstthingwe can say about this is that it was hardlybourgeoisin any sense of the word. The of the second, less definite, is that it seems highly representative masses of the population and especially of the peasantrywhich accountedfor four-fifthsof it; witness the Legion'sstrengthin the facultieswheremost of the theologicalseminariesand agronomical peasantstudentswent, its popularitywith villagepriestsand those village teacherswho did not lean towardsthe PeasantParty, and who were countryborn. the numberof legionnaires Like Codreanu, son of a small-townhigh schoolteacher,like Ion Mota, son of a country priest, like ConstantinPapanace,son of Macedoniansettlersin Dobrogea,legionaryleadershipcame from the provincial,only-just-urbanized intelligentsia:sons or grandsons of peasants, school teachers, and priests. But the very fact that their bastionwas in the schools,and that they soon attracted or at least affectedan importantportionof the country'syouth and of the intellectuals,meantthat the Legion'ssocialmake-upwouldbecome broaderwith time. A nominal roll in the possession of Mr ConstantinPapanace gives the age and professionsof 251 legionnaires,most of whom had taken refuge in Germany after the unsuccessful rising of
January 1941, and who were interned in Buchenwald between 1942

would be most likelyto reflectthe legionaryleadershipin Bucarest and a few other centres, whom the Germanshelped to leave the
Io7
8

218 charged with participation in the rising of January I941). It

and I944. This is not a representative group: it includesa number of boys who were studyingin Germanyat the time and who sided with the Legion, it does not include women (some of whom were quite activein the Legion), it does not includepriests(who played an importantrole in the ruralleadership,with one even becoming a CountyPrefectin the periodof the National-Legionary state, and

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

country. Which may explain the absence of priests, the paucity of peasants, and the strong representation of the educated professions. The most numerous group by far are the sixty students accounting for 26 per cent of the total, followed at a distance by thirty workers, twenty-nine lawyers, twenty-six public servants (including four policemen). Education accounts for Io-8 per cent, and the professions, other than law, for about Io per cent more. (See table i.)
PAPANACE'S ROLL

Table i Professions Student Worker Lawyer State employee Tradesmanor shopkeeper Professor Schoolteacher Engineer Commercialemployee Journalist Police Agriculture Doctor Officer Other No information Total Io8
8 4 4 3
3 8
20

Table 2

60
30 29
22

Age Bornin I88o

I896 I898
I900

I I
2 2 2

I9OI 1901
I902 1903

3
2 2

I3 13 I2
12

1904 I905 I906 1907

1908 I9o8

3 6 9 5
IO

I909
1910

1911
1912

17 I7
24
28

I9I3 1914 I9I5 1917 I9I8 1919

I920

i8
16 Io

1921 I922
1923 I924

7 6 17 5 8
2 2 I 226

Total who give age

25I

Average age in I940: 27.4

THE MEN OF THE ARCHANGEL

Table3
Legionnairesexecuted at Vaslui, 21 September 1939* Students 14 I students High-school

University graduates Lawyers Engineers Stateemployees Officers Journalists

Total

5 4 4 2 I I
32

* C. Papanace, Martiri Legionari (Rome: 1952), p. 19. The sample, too small for statistical use, is given for comparative purposes. It represents known leaders imprisoned in the concentration camp at Vaslui, and executed as part of the reprisals for the legionary murder of Prime Minister Armand Calinescu. Of forty-four men similarly executed in another camp, Miercurea-Ciuc, twenty were university or high-school students.

It is interestingthat, while there are four policemen, there are only three officers(whom disciplinemust havekept at theirposts), only three doctors (whose professionmay have kept them busy), and only four peasants.So this is not a representative cross-section of the movement'smembership,only an indicationof the make-up of its leadershipwhich we may comparewith the figures of the (as againstonly I-7 per cent in Buchenwald), engagedin agriculture 9 per cent in industryand transport(as against13 per cent or more in Buchenwald),3-2 per cent in commerce(as againstthree times What we have here at first sight is the predominance of salaried employees,professionalsand membersof that 'new middle class' in which Ralf Dahrendorfsees 'one of the main sourcesof support for the Nazis, and possiblyfor the Italian Fasciststoo'.6But it can be judgedin properperspectiveonly when correlated with the age
21-2 per cent of them were under twenty-five,nearly40 per cent under thirty - a factor which brings out their marginality,their in the existingorderof things, restlessness,theirlackof integration
6 See his 'Recent Changes in the Class Structure', in S. R. Graubard, ed., A New Europe ? (Boston: I964), p. 317; and his Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford: I959).

country's active population in I930, of which 78-2 per cent was

that many in Buchenwald) ...

of these men, which is uniformly very low (see table 2): in I940,

109

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

for radicalvisions and enterprisesbealtogethertheir availability fore which their elders might be inclined to hesitate.7 That the Legion was a young movementis clearfrom the age of its leaders: in 1931, at the time of their first electoralenterprise, Codreanuwas thirty-two,his second in command,Mota, twentynine; other leading figures,Vasile Marin - twenty-seven,Mihail Stelescu - twenty-four.It is not clear, for lack of data, whether their studies had been as unsuccessful as Ionescu claims, but incidental informationshows that the leading figures had completed their universitystudies and that those who failed to do so, like Stelescu who became a deputy in I932 at the age of twentyfive, did so because they turned into directionsmore fascinating and perhaps more rewarding.In any case, only 8 per cent of in Romanian universities studentsregistered duringthe years192 Ifromone's a indicates that fact which ever graduation graduated, 32 studies (at all levels) was in Romaniathe exceptionratherthan the illuminating rule, and that it would be hard to draw particularly who abandoned conclusionsfromthe numberof legionarymilitants their academicendeavours. We might do better by turning squarelyin the one direction which critics of the Legion have ignored - that of their electoral activity.There is good reasonfor ignoringit, since detaileddataof Romanianelectoralresults is scarce and I have had to make do with superficialindications gleaned from the press, from Codreanu's circulars and memoirs, and the announcementsof the RomanianMinistryof the Interior.The results, such as they are, may be seen in Map I, which shows not a total pictureof Legion support but those areaswhere it seems to have been most active and most successful.Until 1933, these centredin South Moldavia (Putna, Tutova, Covurlui), South Basarabia (Cahul, Ismail, Tighina), with one bastion in central Transylvania(Turda) and two outlyingcountiesin North Moldavia(Neamt, Campulung). The first thing to be said about this distributionis that it was primarilythe result of chance and of the privatepredilectionsor connections of Codreanu and his friends. The mountains, the
7 We might compare this with the situation in the NSDAP, in which 7-82 per cent of the membership was under twenty-five, I8 I6 per cent under thirty, and the average age of thirty-four Reichsleiter cited by Franz Neumann, Behemoth (London: I944), pp. 374-6, is 39'5. In his study of the Nazi Elite (op. cit., p. Io), Lerner places its average age about 48. IIO

THE MEN OF THE ARCHANGEL

monasteries,the forests and the rushing streams of Neamt and Campulung are the cradle and the core of Moldavian history. Codreanuwas fascinatedby them, liked to retreatthere, and cultivated the local people who repaidthe unwontedinterestshown in their isolated lives with an interest of their own. The same was true of the arid mountainsof the Moti, in the county of Turda, whence Mota liked to trace his descent and where he led many a student march. Then, like all Romanian nationalists, but more than most, Codreanuwas interestedin the peculiarhistoricalsurvivalof the Razasi - free villageswhose inhabitantstracedtheir descent from a commonfree (noble) ancestorand claimeda customaryfreedom to run their own affairsthrougha councilof villageelders. Some of these village-aggregations are mentioned in seventeenth-century chartersas 'Republics'.8Those razas communitieswhich lasted into the I930s were markedby a highly integratedsociety, collective organization, and a long traditionof struggle,first againstencroachinglandowners,then against the forestrytrusts which devoured the common forests and destroyedlocal secular customs. These regions attractedCodreanu'sattention,and a glance at the map will show that counties like Tutova and Covurlui, where razas villages account for 45 and 44-5 per cent of the population respectively,were amongthose where Legion activitiesfirstbegan, while all three of the famous seventeenth-century 'Republics' Vrancea (Putna), Tigheci (Cahul) and Moldavian Campulungappearon the Legionmap. So, on one hand historicalaffinities,on the other the predilections of a romanticnationalist.Last, but not least, chance:personal contactsof an earlierday which led to Codreanu's very first rural tour in 1929,in the God-forsaken north-eastcornerof propaganda Covurlui county, where he went invited by a local acquaintance andwhosepeasantsneverforgothim. If we now turn to seek less subjectivecriteria,we find that these are all poor, isolated, predominantly agricultural counties, which makesthem no differentfrommanyotherpartsof Romania,except that they aremoreso than most. Neamt, Tutova, and Putnahad an unusually high incidence of pellagra (between thirty and sixty cases per thousandinhabitants),second only to one other county.
8 See H. H. Stahl, in Enciclopedia Ronlaniei, I (Bucarest: 1938), pp. 563-75. III

M~ -I
ME

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

Pellagra is the corn-eating peasant's poverty disease par excellence and, in this distinction, Campulung was only a short way behind. Nearby Cahul and Ismail excelled not only in pellagra, but in the high incidence of malaria and also of trachoma, the poor man's conjunctivitis. Throughout these counties the symbols of the modem world were rare. The proportion of their inhabitants benefitting from social insurance or organized in cooperative societies was below the low national average; illiteracy well above the national average, rising to 60 per cent or higher in the Basarabian counties; industry absent or concentrated in one town while the countryside stagnated; communications poorer than elsewhere. What all this means may appear more clearly if we compare the Legion with its most obvious competitor: the National Christian League (LANC) from which it sprang. A.C. Cuza, head of the LANC, was the oldest and most virulent of Romanian antiSemites, an admirer of Drumont and Maurras, a patented nationalist, and the original source of Codreanu's inspiration. The two men had worked together since 1923, when Codreanu organized the LANC and offered its presidency to Cuza. In I926, the new party had done reasonably well, winning over I20,000 votes and electing ten deputies, but differences between Cuza and Codreanu grew apace. The latter finally broke with his mentor in I927, because Cuza, University Professor and Member of Parliament, would not countenance the younger man's radical objectives and methods. Nationalist, anti-liberal, and anti-marxist, Cuza's chief idea was a monomaniacal anti-Semitism, and the LANC platform stood for the elimination of Jews from the Army, the Bar, state administration and education, and the application of a numerusclausus everywhere else, limiting Jewish education facilities and their participation in trades and professions to their proportion of the country's population. Insofar as this programme coincided with that of Codreanu's Legion, one might have expected the two parties to compete on similar ground. Yet a glance at Map 2 will show that, with a few exceptions, this was not the case. Why ? Again, evidence is circumstantial and explanation speculative. The LANC had begun by spreading through the poor counties of North Moldavia, Bucovina, and North Basarabia, where the proportion of Jews was unusually high and anti-Semitism could easily be preached as a solution to economic and political problems.
II4

THE MEN OF THE ARCHANGEL

Throughout Bucovina, especially, the greater part of industry, the importantlumberbusiness,was in foreign,mainly particularly sometimesverypoor,alwaysoverThe countryside, hands. Jewish, industries where older home were wilting under the populated, of machine-made looked to the towns for work.Yet goods, impact the little country towns, once reasonablyprosperouscentres of local commerce,wasted away for lack of railroadsor because one city (here, Cernauti)monopolizedall industrialand commercial activities.The peasantlookingfor work,the smallurbanbourgeois foundthemselves tryingto competewith moremodernenterprises, most striking and whose small, facing Jewish entrepreneurs, large characteristic was less their money power than their foreign-ness. Jews, who accountedfor only 4-2 per cent of Romania'spopulation, madeup 23-6 per cent of Moldavia'surbanpopulation,27 per cent of Basarabia's urbanpopulation,30-I per cent of Bucovina's urban population.Most of them (two-thirdsin Moldavia,almost five-sixthsin Bucovina,almost all in Basarabia) spoke Yiddish as their first, sometimes as their only, language.Their dress, their language,and their ways designatedthem as a separatenational group,which is what they insistedthey were. Refusalto assimilate made this highly compact Jewish population more visible, and concentrated upon it the wrathof culturaland economicnationalists. To the peasants,the Jews representedthe farm-stewards or farming trusts exploiting their labour, the innkeepersand shopkeepers lending them money at usurious rates (becausethe state refused to lend them any at all), the mills and timber companies milling their grain,milkingtheir income, cutting their forests, refusing them work or giving it them at starvationwages. To the people of the markettowns they representedcompetition,on the spot or in the largerurbancentres.To the new aspiringbourgeoisie they werethe men who stoodin theirway in the schools,the courts, the moneymarket,the professions.To idealists,they were resident foreigners who spurned the national culture, rejected national unity, threatenednationalbeing and integrity. These were the sentiments to which the National Christian League appealed; but it could do this best where its argument reflected local experience: in Storojinet where 46 Synagogues faced 77 Orthodox Churches, in Radauti where 49 Synagogues faced 7I Orthodox Churches,in Botosaniwhere 66 Synagogues faced Io9 OrthodoxChurches,in Iasi where Io8 Synagogues faced
II5

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

239 Churches; in towns like Suceava or Botosani, skirted by the new railway lines and thus decaying; in regions like Soroca which once shipped its fruit and wines and grains down the Dniester to the Black Sea but now decayed for lack of roads or railroads; in a poor county like Baia where peasants could not make ends meet on the great estate lands divided among them after the first world war, and blamed the Jewish usurers and timber merchants; in Falciu, crossed by erstwhile-busy roads, now deserted for railways that avoided the region, where once-prosperous markets had shrunk to nothing and drought had come to finish what the communications catastrophe began. There is a line from a Romanian song which embodies the whole ethos of the LANC: 'As they come with rails and trains/There is not a song remains!' But the nostalgic resentment, the backwardlooking bitterness of Cuza's party, does not go far in describing the atmosphere of Codreanu's new movement. Where the typical LANC stronghold was poor because decaying, the typical legionary stronghold was poor because it had never been better off. In South Basarabia, Ismail and Cahul are and always have been economically isolated9; the same holds good for Tutova and for the notoriously poor land of the Moti, in Turda, on which the Legion concentrated its attention. More important, perhaps, the Jewish problem was less acute in legionary counties than in those of the LANC. In Putna or Ismail, anti-Semitism made a less effective battle cry than in the Bucovina counties. When one leaves the North-East, the Jewish question diminishes in intensity and anti-Semitism loses its edge. The most striking thing about Map II is the regionalism of the LANC. Cuza's anti-Semitic party could not spread beyond the borders of the region where anti-Semitism answered local problems and realities. When it sought to become a national party, it had to ally itself with the National Agrarian Party of Octavian Goga, a nationalist from Transylvania who brought with him a breath of populism and an appeal less regionally restricted. Even so, flying the anti-Semitic flag above all others, the coalition Cuza and Goga
9 South Basarabian land had the lowest average price per hectare of any in Romania, markedly lower (by over 30 per cent) than land values in North Basarabia where the LANC predominated, and less than one-third the value of land in wealthier provinces. The same applies to Southern as compared to North and North-West Moldavia.

THE MEN OF THE ARCHANGEL

formed in I935 continuedto do best in the North-East that still

furnished Cuza's firm base. Between I932 and 1937, while Co-

dreanu'smovementgrew sixfold, the Cuza-Gogagrouphardlyadvancedat all. This indicatesthe Legion'ssuperiordynamism,but also the limits of the anti-Semitic appeal, limitations which Codreanu recognized both in theory -by acknowledgingthat Romania'sproblemswent far beyond Jewish ones - and in practice by adaptinghis propaganda to provinceswith other problems and anothermentality.The resultsof I937 areproofthathe didthis successfully;but his success was not unconnectedwith methods the legionnairesdevelopedin the areaswherethey firststartedout. When comparingthe areas of legionary and Cuzist strength, anotherdifferenceappearswhich may be relevantin this connection. Where Romania'saveragepopulation density in 1930 was 61-2 per squarekilometer,the averageof LANC countieswas 73, that in the Legion counties54, falling as low as 40 in some places. This suggests that the older party had establisheditself in more populous areaswhere it found a more accessiblepublic. The new movementhad to seek followersin less denselypopulatedareas,in communitiesthat were less accessibleand more neglected. It had to workharderto win, and to the extentit won, its exertionsserved as useful training. The tale of legionaryelectioneeringis one of arduousmarchesor rides into the countryside,over hill and dale, through snowdrifts, across precariouslyfrozen rivers or along dusty, muddy trails to villages that politicians never saw, to mobilize a peasantryuntappedor forgottenor disillusionedat the failureof solicitingpoliticosin whom it had put its trust. Legionnairescontinuedto apply the methodsevolvedin these earlycampains, going to the peasantand winninghis trust by workingin his fields and staying in his home, when they moved out of the East after I934, establishing new bastions among the peasants of Munteniaand Olteniain countieswith an old traditionof peasant socialism,like Vlascaand Teleorman,and generallyin areaswhere, once more,the very high incidenceof malaria (Vlasca,Teleorman), pellagra(Braila,Prahova),or syphilis (Dolj), reflectedthe prevailing misery and malnutrition. The method workedbecause of the enthusiasmand dedication of the militants, because of Codreanu'sinsistence on effort and discipline,but also quite simply becausethese studentsand other 'riff-raff' were very close to the peasants,as we have seen; able and
I17

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

willing to talk the language,dance the dances,and workthe fields of the men to whom they addressedthemselves. Far from being a bourgeoisor petty-bourgeoismovementin the sense such words suggest, the Legion was a popularand populist which the masses(in the Romanian movement,with a programme context of peasantsand workers)recognizedas radicalenough for of the establishedorder,from them, and which the representatives Cuza to the King, recognizedas revolutionary. It may be significant in this connection that the only other party with populist velleities,the PeasantParty,was very weakin those North-Eastern provinceswhere Codreanustarted out, or else lost the peasants' trust (as happenedin Munteniaand Olteniaafter 1933) by abandoning its more reformistactivities.Equallyinteresting:the only region where the Legion did not implantitself as a protestmovein the North and North-West,was also the only ment, Maramures the small Social-DemocraticParty showed some where region which suggests once again that the Legion prospered activity, where it filled a need some other movementfailed to fill, where it found an availablepublic. The sameholds good of Codreanu's appealto industrialworkers who, in the absenceof an effectivelabourmovement,turnedto the one leaderwho offeredsolutions more extremethan those of the establishedparties.A special LegionaryWorkers'Corps,founded in I936, soon boastedeight thousandmembersin Bucarestalone.
Disbanded from 1938 to I940, by October 1940 it counted thirteen

Electoralsuccessesin industrialcountieslike thousandmilitants.10 was not limited Prahovaand Hunedoarasuggest that recruitment to the capital. Codreanu'sradicalnationalismwas calculatedto appeal to all would who put theirhope in radicalchanges.His anti-communism not botherthem. Insofaras workersor peasantsnoted it, it would and hence acceptable.Insofar appearas a form of anti-Russianism with Jewishleadership, socialism was identified or as communism the social anti-Semitism of the urban poor, the economic antiSemitism of the peasants, were sufficient to discredit them. offereda doctrineof radicalreformwhichneitherclashed Codreanu
10 Buna Vestire, 19 November I940; Corneliu Zelea Codreanu: 20 Ani dela Moarte (Madrid: I958), p. 65.

II8

THE MEN OF THE ARCHANGEL

with their nationalisticprejudicesnor arousedtheir suspicion of city slickers out to use and discardthem. Neither the appealsof class consciousnessnor those of bourgeoisliberalismcould wake much of an echo in the Romaniaof that day. If we areto look upon his ideas as a class doctrine, it would be one similarto the social nationalism of many underdevelopedcountries today, violently opposed to internaland externaloppressors,and appealingto all for whom the establishedorderrepresentedthe fount of injustice, oppression, and opportunities denied: peasants, workers, and those whose patrioticand moral principleswere offendedby the impuritiesof the rulingsystem. Economic factors were less important in recruiting the dissatisfied (who could have turned towards reaction and Cuza as easily as they turned towardsrevolutionand Codreanu),than in establishinga degree of isolation, in keeping certain groups and areasoutsidethe swim, uninvolvedin the currentpoliticalprocess, uncommittedto given politicalattitudes,and thus open to legionary appeals.Hence the inordinaterole of youth in a movementthat began by mobilizing schoolboysand students, admitted no men over thirty in its elite formation(the Mota-MarinCorps,founded in 1937) and always relied heavily on its networkof youth clubs of the Cross, or FDC, foundedin 1924). (the Brotherhood But a movement that rests on youth faces a major problem, whichis thatyouth does not last and that,soonerorlater,the normal conflictof generationswill be aggravated by ideologicalreferences and recriminations. Most fascist movementsresolvedthe problem by elimination,expulsion, or encouraginghegiras, which rid the leadershipof younger challengersand the movement of its more radicalelements. In the Legion, the problemwas solvedwhen the original group of leaders was decimated in the persecution of 36, and their friends to scale: which is quite young enough. But most of this groupwas dead,all of its leadingpersonalities had disappeared,and it is interestingto see that, of the 226 men interned in Buchenwald whose age we know, only fifteen belonged to Codreanu's The averageage of thesemenin I940 would generation. have been 27-4, with more than three-quarters of the groupstill in their twenties.Whichmeansthat, politicallyspeaking,they hadnot even existed in the early thirties, and that they representeda new who had replacedtheir fallenelders. generation,a new promotion,
119 I938-9. In I940, Codreanu would have been 41, Mota 38, Marin

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

So the Legion always remaineda very young movement, and action. thus supremely availablefor every kind of revolutionary and And it is significant in the that moderates conflict that, opposed radicalswithin the Legion after Codreanu'sdeath, and especially State, the older men duringthe period of the National-Legionary stood largelyfor temporizingand compromise;they opposed the Januaryrising and in some cases even sided with GeneralAntonescu (like Codreanu'sown father): facts which may explain the small proportionof older men in Buchenwaldand also the swashbuckling spirit, the brutal, reckless, and inexperiencedkind of politics which markedthe Legion's brief spell of power. All of which suggests that the major factors in a radical or orientationare less strictlysociologicalthan psychorevolutionary factorswhich culturaland, above all, chronological those logical: makefor greateravailability, restlessness, greaterreceptivgreater of changeand of actionto securechange. ity, at least,to possibilities I started out by asking three questions. First: do fascist-type movements recruit most heavily from the middle sections of society? While the leaders,like those of mostpoliticalmovements, come fromthe middlesections,this in itself proveslittle morethan the similar origins of left-wing leaders. Their following, on the other hand, in a countrylike Romania,includeda significantportion of peasantsand manualworkers.11 of othercountries.Thus, The sameseemstrue, mutatis mutandis, Hans Gerth'sstudy of Nazi party membershipin 1933 shows almost one-thirdto be manualworkersand 2I per cent white-collar workers. Then, in descending order, come artisans,merchants, and professionalmen who together account for I7.6 per cent; peasants,I2-6 per cent; and others(domesticservants,taxi drivers, and so on), about Io per cent.12When we rememberwhat we are natureof the NSDAP, this seems a told aboutthe petty-bourgeois even fair though manualworkers,who made up 46 spread, pretty areunder-represented. German of the cent working population, per
11 Cf. Hungary, where industrial workers accounted for 40 per cent or more of the membership of the National-Socialist coalition formed round Szalasi, while only 23 per cent of the active population was engaged in industry and mining. Istvan Deak, National Socialism in Hungary, 1920-1938, p. IoI. 12 Cf. the slightly different figures in Wolfgang Schafter, Entwicklung und Struktur der Staatspartei des Dritten Reiches (Hannover, I956), p. 17. 120

THE MEN OF THE ARCHANGEL

We must bear in mind that classes with less education and less in politics; that industrial leisure are generallyunder-represented in and unions in the Social-Democratic labourwas solidlyorganized that it was solicited and Party; being by a rival protest party of class-consciousness which could to sentiments (KPD) appeal Nazi success in laid down for generations.In the circumstances, as of that as it did seems impressive,and the attracting many group fascism and middle identification of the accepted groupsof society less than overwhelming. In any case, is the conceptof middle classesa meaningfulone in this context? I think it is misleadingbecause, by association,it suggests orientationsand interestswhich are not typical of fascist movements. In the Marxist view, such people fight to preserve their existence as membersof the middle class and thus, whether deliberatelyor not, providethe last weapon of financecapitalism. This is hardly true of the Romanian peasants; and fascists in generalattackfinancecapitalism,repudiatethe idea of the middle class as a separateclass, and reject its values. Where they do not reject what we call 'bourgeois'values, it is precisely where their application, as in Romania, would have the least conservative effects. In politicalterms, economic and social class seem less relevant to politicalorientationthan ideologicalconditioningand the existence (or absence)of stronglystructured parties.Wheresuch parties exist, Catholics,peasants,or industrialworkersare not availableto the appeal of other ideologies. Where such parties are absent or weak,these groupsarejust as open as all others.To the extent that Western industrial workers are well organized and that, at the otherend of the politicalspectrum,the smallbut significant minordoctrinesof ity of the rich and securemaintainsits self-confidence, violent protest and radicalchange will necessarilydo best among the remaininggroups.To the extent that those least committedto the establishedorder are most available,the radicalswill do best among them. It is only in this sense that we can say that fascists recruittheir troopsamongthe middle classes- and especiallyfrom the section which a Germansociologisthas revealinglydescribed as the quasi-proletariat.13
13 Theodor

in the Free Corps came from lower middle class and peasant backgrounds. The 121

1932); Robert Waite, Vanguard of Nazism (Harvard: I952), finds that most men

Geiger, Die soziale Schichtung des deutschen Volkes (Stuttgart:

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

? The third question - are these people especially reactionary Do they embody, does their activityexpress,tendencieswhich we ? The answerto shoulddescribeas politicallyor sociallyretrograde this questiondependsupon one's views of the regimesattackedor caseatleast,Codreanu's displacedby fascism;and,in the Romanian Legion appearsas a distinctlyradicalsocial force. Studentsof fascism have pointed out that the exigent code and high idealismof such groups must be relatedto the baser reality of their activitiesin the serviceof a ruthlesscauseor in the enjoyment of their short-livedtriumphs.The point is well takenand the failure well known. But it might be suggestive to comparethis fracturebetweendreamand deed with the fate of childrenwho are taught one set of values at home and at school and then, in due course,warnedthat these cannotbe integrallyappliedin the world - that, in other words, integrity is not a social virtue. Protests and compromises,againstthe slacknessof curagainstsurrenders a state out of rent morality,are consideredevidenceof immaturity, than as it is rather as it world which they will grow to accept the to current but not to proclaimedtheory shouldbe according practice. In effect, most people do just that, and adolescentrevolt is generallysucceededby more or less reluctant,more or less contented, adjustment.Inability or refusal to adjust, albeit for the best of moralreasons,is then considereda sign of weakness,of inthis is an odd state competence,andfinallyof failure.On reflection, is our it resolute and of affairs; inconsistencythat enablesus only in which the wheels of situation a of the avoid to implications its avowed of at the turn principles. expense only society It would be possibleto argue,as Roger Cailloishas done in his essay on 'L'Esprit des sectes',14that the discrepancybetween principlesand practice drives not the weakest but the strongest into intransigentpositions where criticismof worldly laxness rewhich solves into a new rigour,an idealisticand puritanreformism
labouring classes, he says, did not tend to join even the volunteer army of the Republic. Why ? 'Men with a job and a family did not feel disposed to risk their economic position.' They would not even risk it to join the Socialist Security Force which had to recruit the same buccaneer types as the Free Corps. So, when a miner or a factory worker has a job and sticks to it, he counts as labour and we understand why he will not join a Free Corps. When he is out of a job, he becomes lower middle class and is free to join, because we all know the link between lower middle class and reaction. 14 Instincts et Societe (Paris: I964). 122

THE MEN OF THE ARCHANGEL

turns into rebellion and (given an unusual conspiracyof events) even revolution. Ich kann nicht anders! is the cry of the illadjusted:it may becomethe startingpoint of a crusadeto readjust society. The worldly equation between idealism and childishnessmay breakdown when grown men refuse to put away childish things, not becausethe men are puerilebut becausethe things seem valuable - more validthan the ways for which they areto be discarded. This begs a question as to the natureof the things, and when we look we find that they are the very commonplaces of moraleducation: truth, justice, industry,love of the fatherland,loyalty, courage, fair dealing- all virtueswhich the world consistentlyteaches in its schoolsand just as consistentlytones down, a situationwhose featuresmost of us manageto ignore. exasperating There is no spaceto go into the wideraspectsor the philosophyof such compromise;only into its relevanceto fascismand to the rise of such intransigentand 'pure' movementsas the Legion of the ArchangelMichael.And therewe might considerthat the stronger the moral teaching, the greaterthe shock of the discrepancybetween principlesand practice,the strongerthe inclinationto rebel. In France,where young people were early introducedto a rather would scepticalview of the world and its ways, such intransigence be less widespreadthan in a Germanywhere education,at school and in the home, was much more fundamentalistin matters of moralityand patriotism.In a countrylike Romania,where official educationwas highly moralisticand patriotic,the differencebetween lessonslearntat school and the corruption and opportunism of urban or public life would be extraordinarily shocking.Naturally, the shocked would be a minority and those proceeding to rebellioneven fewer, for few can or care to stand againstcurrent values on which such reactionis based practice,and the particular arenot inculcatedin all. They havelittle currencyamongthe verypoorand educationally neglected,whose inclinationis to take things as they come (albeit with ill grace) without arguing that they should be otherwise, especiallynot on principle.They find little echo in an industrial workingclass which has been persuadedthat injusticeis inherent in a societywherethe dominantclassesuse wordsas they use their interests.Fromthe Marxist power,in the serviceof theirparticular
I23 9

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

point of view, public hypocrisyin a non-Marxistsociety is unavoidable:it would be its absencethat seems shocking.It follows from this that rebellion must be directed not against superficial moralflaws, but againstthe power structureof which moralityis merely the (corrupt)expression. This is why idealistic reaction appearsso frequentlyamong middle-classintellectualsand among youngmen broughtup in socialgroupswith a simplefundamentalist moralcode: eithertrainedto place principlesabovepractice,or deeply shakento see practiceflout and stain principlesso recently and authoritatively inculcated. Whether in disillusion or righteousindignation,one may find here the origin of the impulse to establish'the foundationsof an ideal alliancein the midst of a sordidworld'.15 Such an alliancebecomes a school of virtue, of initiativeand discipline,of hardness and loyalty, a training ground for the service of a transcendent cause which emancipatesthe zealots from a society they now acceptonly to conquerand change. There is nothing intrinsicallyevil about this. A society whose balanceis one of selfishnessand habit, whose toleranceis laxness or lethargy,whereprudenceis the mistressof decision,can benefit of the principles from an infusion of fervour,from a reaffirmation of the zealots,their on which it claimsto stand.The intransigence activity,even theirviolence,may act as a sharpandbittertonic to a flabbypublic morality,a challengeto which some may rise by discardingthe lazier compromises,the softness, the permissiveness not of strengthbut of doubt. And, to go no further,it does appear as if much of the EuropeanLeft between the wars defined itself against the challenge of fascism in terms of the challenge of fascism, and the process was a natural one since the sources of dissatisfaction werethe samefor both sides, lying in both casesin a moralrevoltagainstexistingsociety,againstthe hypocrisyand softness of the Establishment, againsta decadenteconomicliberalism and the overweeningpower of capital. The sources of dissatisfactionwere similar,the radicalconclusionswere similar,only the directionsin which people followedtheir conclusionswere differof populismand ent, and even these wereessentiallya combination sectarianelitism. And here we must repeat the argumentof this essay: that where no Left existed, the protest, the politicalization of the unpoliticalized,the cowed or ignorant, the resigned or
15 Ibid., p. 93. 124

THE MEN OF THE ARCHANGEL

indifferent - their nationalization, with all its revolutionary impli-

cations- all this was left to movementslike Codreanu's. There were cold techniciansor profiteers of powerin both camps, whose populismwas as superficialas their idealism.What proved more important was that both populism and elitist zeal altered with the achievement of power,and they alteredbecausethe movement itself changedfrom an allianceof criticsand rebelsto a coalition of defenders and exploiters of what had been won. Such of change was inevitableand goes far to explain the performance idealists in power, much fartherthan the inference that the oppressed dreamonly of becoming oppressors. In theirwaragainstsocietythe zealotshad calledfor change,had cultivatedviolenceand the heroicvirtues which both justifiedand made it possible, had prided themselves on being an elite of the initiated,the virtuous,the brave.Societyonce conquered,the erstwhile rebels became governors.The only changenow wantedwas such as they themselveswould bring, the violence they practised was no longer excusableor heroic but tyrannousand mean, the elite they constitutedaspiredto include society as a whole, so that whatevervirtuesit once possesseddissolvedin the mass and what had been the deliberatecommitmentof the few becamethe forced or managedconformityof the many. The greaterthe victory,the less resistancewas left in the way of those absolute principleswhich once furnishedthe dynamic and turnedinto intolerantpersecuinspirationof action. Intransigence tion and the heroic content of the movementinto posturing.The movementitself remainedin motion partly by substitutingsham aims for real ones, or, losing impetus, degenerated into a defence for the vested interestsof a new power clique. organization Success, it seems, is the worst enemy of fascism. Of the three Europeanmovementswhich achievedpower by their own efforts, the Italianfascistsrecoveredsome of their originalradicalism only in defeat; the Romanians,who had little time to show their salt, were first decimated,then swamped by incompetentand greedy and the Germanswho did best (fromtheirown point opportunists; of view), beganby eliminatingtheirradicalsand ended by producing a generationof power technocratsand politicalengineers,uninterested in principle or doctrine and utterly indifferentto the motives of their elders, except as factorsin their own careers. This is not because,as has been said, the only aim of fascismis
I25

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

power, but becausethe true aim of fascistswhich, in one guise or contradicts another,is to effecta nationalrevivaland regeneration, not the meansthey use to get to power,butthosetheyuse once they are in power. The ruthlessness, the passion, the fierce resolve which markthe strugglefor powerbecomepoor counsellorswhen power has been grasped. The personalitiesbest suited to the struggle are not always best suited to rule. The movement which thrived on the availabilityof an uncommittedpublicnow rests on rigidity and regimentation.And the contradictions of the situation make it virtuallycertainthat it will fail, either to its opponentsor to its ideals.

126